Responding to that suspension, Ward had been defiant: “I will not apologise for describing the state of Israel as an apartheid state. I don’t know how you can describe it as anything else. I am genuinely quite shocked at the reaction to the kind of thing many people say.”

Earlier this week the local Lib Dem branch in Bradford East selected Ward as their candidate for this year’s election, but responding to complaints from ultra-Zionist Tory rivals such as Theresa May and Sir Eric Pickles, Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said today: “I believe in a politics that is open, tolerant and united. David Ward is unfit to represent the party and I have sacked him. …I am fully aware of the comments David Ward has made in the past and I find them deeply offensive, wrong and antisemitic.”

This latest move indicates a complete Lib Dem surrender to profoundly illiberal political correctness, following their suspension of Luton Lib Dem candidate Ashuk Ahmed yesterday. Ahmed had made a series of anti-Zionist Facebook posts in 2014, including the statement: “Zionists control half the world, we are the other half. So let’s make a lot more noise.”

Is Tim Farron blind in one eye? How else can we explain his insistence on disciplining pro-Palestinian members of his own party, but his failure to condemn a rival party leader – Theresa May – for her blatant support of Zionist terrorism during a speech in 2015. Mrs May (then Home Secretary) praised commemoration of Yom Hazikaron, the day on which “We remember the sacrifice of those who fought to achieve and protect that independence.” This means most notably those Zionist terrorists who died fighting against British forces and Arab civilians during 1945-48, and includes those who were executed for atrocities such as the murder of Lord Moyne and his driver Lance Corporal Arthur Fuller.